La Drogheria

Piazza Vittorio Veneto and the Bar at Its Edge

There are piazzas in Italy, and then there is Piazza Vittorio Veneto in Turin. Roughly 400 metres long and framed by uniform neoclassical arcades, it descends toward the Po river with a grandeur that most Italian cities reserve for their main civic squares. The bars and cafes that line its colonnaded edges absorb that scale, which means arriving at La Drogheria already carries a particular weight: the city is doing most of the atmospheric work before you step inside. What separates the bars along this strip is what happens at the counter, and La Drogheria's 2025 placement at number 401 in the Top 500 Bars global ranking signals that this address takes the programme behind the glass seriously.

Turin's cocktail culture occupies a specific position in the Italian bar conversation. The city is the historical home of vermouth — Carpano introduced it here in the late eighteenth century — and that heritage shapes how serious drinkers and bartenders in Turin think about aperitivo-hour drinking. But a piazza bar earning a global ranking is doing something beyond pouring a negroni into a chilled glass at six in the evening. It is placing itself in a peer set that includes rooms in Milan, Rome, Naples, and Florence where technique, sourcing, and creative ambition define the difference between a well-run local favourite and a programme worth travelling for.

The Cocktail Programme in the Context of Italian Bar Culture

Italian cocktail bars have moved considerably in the last decade. The country's leading rooms are no longer defined solely by the aperitivo tradition, though that tradition remains the foundation. What has shifted is the depth of the programme: the use of house-made ingredients, the engagement with Italian spirits beyond Campari and Aperol, and a willingness to treat the cocktail list as a seasonal, evolving document rather than a fixed canon. La Drogheria sits within this movement, its ranking placing it in the same broad tier as bars across the peninsula that have earned recognition for going further than the format demands.

Across Italy, the bars drawing global attention tend to share certain characteristics: a defined point of view on the drinks list, technical precision that reads as confident rather than showy, and a room atmosphere that earns repeat visits. 1930 in Milan has built its identity around a specific historical conceit and a closed-door format. Boeme in Rome and L'Antiquario in Naples occupy neighbourhood positions with distinct programme identities. Gucci Giardino in Florence operates within a fashion-house framework. La Drogheria's context is different from all of them: a fully public piazza setting, a city with its own entrenched drinking traditions, and an international ranking that positions it outside the usual Turin parameters.

The name itself is worth noting. A drogheria is a traditional Italian grocery , the kind of shop that historically sold spices, dried goods, and small quantities of spirits. The name points toward an aesthetic rooted in old Turin's commercial streetscape, which aligns with the broader Italian bar tendency to frame serious drinking programmes inside nostalgic or heritage-inflected environments. Whether the interior follows through on that framing is something a visit will determine, but the naming choice locates the bar in a particular Italian cultural register.

Where La Drogheria Sits in the Turin Bar Conversation

Turin has a bar scene that punches above what most international visitors expect. The city's vermouth heritage, its strong cafe culture rooted in the historical Gran Caffè tradition, and its proximity to wine-producing regions that include Barolo, Barbaresco, and Moscato d'Asti all feed into how the city drinks. For cocktail bars specifically, the space between a well-executed aperitivo counter and a programme serious enough for global ranking is a meaningful gap, and La Drogheria has crossed it. Piano 35 Lounge Bar represents the city's hotel-rooftop tier with its own point of view; La Drogheria operates in a different register, embedded in the street-level life of the city's most photographed piazza.

The Top 500 Bars ranking, which places La Drogheria at 401 for 2025, uses a methodology that weighs bartender nominations and peer votes heavily, which means inclusion at any position reflects professional recognition rather than consumer popularity alone. A bar at this position on a piazza this size, in a city this overlooked on the international fine-drinking circuit, carries more information than the number itself suggests.

Planning a Visit

La Drogheria is located at Piazza Vittorio Veneto 18/D in Turin, one of the city's most accessible central addresses. The piazza sits at the eastern edge of the historic centre, within walking distance of the river and the Quadrilatero Romano neighbourhood. Timing matters here as it does at any serious bar: arriving in the early evening aligns with Turin's deeply ingrained aperitivo rhythm, but a bar with this ranking earns a second visit later in the evening when the programme's more considered end of the menu tends to come into focus. Booking details are not confirmed in our current data, so contacting the bar directly before a planned visit is advisable, particularly on weekends when the piazza draws significant foot traffic. For broader planning, see our full Turin restaurants guide, our full Turin hotels guide, our full Turin wineries guide, and our full Turin experiences guide.

For readers with enough time to map Italian cocktail programmes across more than one city, the contrast between La Drogheria's piazza-facing aperitivo setting and the more intimate or concept-driven formats found elsewhere is itself worth experiencing. Lost & Found in Nicosia and Bar Leather Apron in Honolulu offer useful international reference points for what a ranked bar programme can look like across very different cultural and geographic contexts.

Frequently Asked Questions

How would you describe the overall feel of La Drogheria?

La Drogheria occupies a position on Piazza Vittorio Veneto, one of Turin's most architecturally charged public spaces. The bar sits within Turin's aperitivo tradition , a city that invented vermouth and maintains one of Italy's strongest cafe and drinking cultures , while operating at a level that earned it the 401st position in the 2025 Top 500 Bars global ranking. The feel, in broad terms, is a serious bar programme attached to a very public, very Turinese address. Price range data is not confirmed in our current record, but the peer set suggested by the ranking places it in the mid-to-upper tier of the city's bar options, consistent with other Top 500-ranked Italian rooms.

What should I drink at La Drogheria?

Specific menu data is not available in our current record, so we cannot point to confirmed signature drinks. What the 2025 Top 500 Bars ranking does indicate is that the programme has earned peer recognition within the global bar industry , which, in an Italian context, typically signals engagement with local spirits heritage (including vermouth, amaro, and grappa-based drinks) alongside a contemporary cocktail sensibility. Turin's vermouth roots make it reasonable to expect that any serious programme here will engage with that tradition in some form. Order with that in mind, and ask the bar team what they are currently building around.